News

Incorporating Health, Safety in Decision-making Process

17 March 2017

CANADA - Canadian pork production has made a tremendous transition from smaller family farms into large-scale high-production barns.

According to a Prairie Swine Centre study, this transition has spurred several process changes and technological advancements throughout the Pork Value Chain. So let’s say you are presented with a new technology, tool, or method to help production. How do you decide if it is going to have a net benefit to your business?

For information on how to incorporate health and safety during the decision-making process, click here.

An experiment was conducted to determine if decreasing the dietary omega-6 (ω-6) to omega-3 (ω-3) fatty acid (FA) ratio would affect protein deposition in nursery pigs during a prolonged E. coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS) inflammatory challenge. Overall, reducing the ω-6:ω-3 FA ratio improves the efficiency by which piglets can utilize nutrients for growth, regardless of the presence of an inflammatory challenge.

Can sow diets enriched with extruded flaxseed replace antibiotics in starter feeds for piglets? by L. Eastwood and A.D. Beaulieu

This study aims to test whether the addition of omega-3 fatty acids into lactating sow diets can replace the use of growth-promoting antibiotics in weaned piglet diets. Two groups of sows (one weaned at three weeks and one at four) were fed one of two diets; control or omega-3. At weaning, 10 piglets were selected from each sow and split into two groups of five.

Recent trials conducted at the Prairie Swine Centre, Inc. have confirmed the importance of feed intake by the piglet immediately post-weaning and/or consumption of creep feed in the farrowing room. We have also demonstrated that more than half of the piglets may not consume either creep feed, or the starter diet immediately post-weaning. However, in commercial barns, where producers typically measure feed disappearance, piglets are maintained in groups that make it difficult to determine which piglets are actually consuming feed.